Quite recently I was involved with the ongoing construction of a very tall building (projected height when eventually completed will be 500+m).

Buildings of this type consist of a steel structure of columns and girder with external cladding. The structure monitoring was to be strain gauges fitted to the foundation as earthquakes were a common event..

My thought at the time was that this was an ideal application for AE testing. If AE was used in a condition monitoring system it would likely detect significant events such as high tension bolts failure and weld cracking through or via the steel structure.

I have not seen any papers on AE testing of tall buildings and I thought it to be both an interesting and prudent application of the technology.